Both my MIL and FIL were Japanese ancestry, born in the US.
Their families were forced to get rid of everything they couldn’t physically carry on a train, and were put into 1-room plywood barracks per family, with a single bare light bulb, and burlap sacks stuffed with straw for beds.
Many of the young men volunteered for combat duty out of camp, and were put into the 100/442nd regimental combat team - a segregated unit.
These young men became the most decorated unit in US military history, seeking to prove the love they had for their country and their willingness to die for it to prove their point. Their motto was “Go For Broke”. They were the ones who rescued the Texas Lost Battalion.
The families were given a one-way ticket and $20 after the war ended. Most of them had no home to go back to - others had ransacked their belongings. The US government razed their homes to the ground on Terminal Island near San Pedro.
Young men who had been attending USC prior to being thrown into an armed prison camp tried to get enrolled again. USC refused to let them continue their education, and also refused to send transcripts to other universities showing previously completed classes.
Finally, after many decades, USC is going to award posthumous honorary degrees to those they forsook - in early April of this year.
Japanese Americans were, and are now, some of the most patriotic people you will ever meet.
What happened to them in WWII must NEVER be repeated on American soil. Period.
Pearl Harbor was bloodier because of traitor Japanese Americans.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niihau_incident
Yeah whatever. A Zero damaged over Pearl Harbor made an emergency landing on the Hawaiian Island of Niihau. There were some native Hawaiians living there, and a couple of first generation Japanese living there.
The first generation Japanese were called to translate for the wounded pilot because the locals had no idea war had broken out and they were caring for him. The Japs instead colluded with him, armed him, helped him destroy papers, got a machine gun out of his plane and took all the Hawaiians prisoner. Fortunately a big Samoan body slammed him on a wall and killed the pilot.
The rapidity with which the three long term Japanese residents on the island swapped sides was a big part of the conversation in DC. So be sure to thank those three traitors for their acts.
It was a war, and we couldn’t have spies all over California.
I would be bitter too.
In many respects the internment was as much of an opportunity for the than Ca Attorney General later Governor Earl Warren’s political cronies to grab valuable farmland and other real estate in California of Japanese Americans as it was a security issue. (Note: Hoover didn’t even view them as much of a threat! Read that in what was supposed to be the definitive biography on Hoover) Those Japanese American families never got their property back. They were eventually paid 25 cents on the dollar for it. This came out of Ca & Federal taxpayer funds rather than from the cronies who got the property. I think it was Jimmy Carter that later got a $25K “I’m sorry we did that!” reparation payment passed for those Japanese Americans who were interned. Again, all from taxpayer funds and now that is being used as a precedent argument for slavery reparations. (As I knew it would be when passed!)
You really have to stretch the envelope to find traitorous Japanese Americans. The northern island crashed Zero - the Naihau case is about the only incident where there is hard evidence. Anyway, as someone pointed out the 442 paid any bills owed.
It’s been said Earl Warren’s “creative” Constitutional interpretations while CJUSSC are due to the guilt he felt over the “internments (and property loss)” of Japanese Americans. (Also note he no prior judicial experience! A purely political payoff appointment!)